It is estimated that our rivers carry out to sea one billion tons of our richest soil each year. The ancient Egyptians worshiped the Nile because each year the spring floods left behind the rich soil deposits that fertilized their fields and gave them an abundant harvest. Entire fields and even whole farms along the upper stretches of the Mississippi and Missouri have been carried away, not the top soil only, but the land itself, by the swift current of the springtime floods as they cut a new channel for the river.
Canaan, the "land of promise" of the Bible, was once an abundant region, "flowing with milk and honey" in the language of Moses, with its grapes, its vast forests of cedar, fir, and oak, its treasures of wheat, olive-oil, and other rich agricultural products. Now all are gone. The entire country seen by the traveler in the Holy Land to-day is one of the most desolate regions on the globe, where the few inhabitants are scarcely able to obtain a scanty living.
We wonder what has brought about this change, and we have not far to seek in answer to our questioning. The preservation of the forests means the preservation of the soil, and the destruction of the forests means the destruction of the soil. This is the universal law. First the forests were cut down and the hillsides left bare. Then the streams wore great ravines down the unprotected hillsides. Steadily the work of destruction by erosion has gone on, until time beyond our possibility to comprehend must pa.s.s before the land can be made productive again. The hills and valleys of China have been devastated in the same way, and many of the older regions of the earth that were once the sites of great cities and extensive commerce are now marked only by the ruins of the civilization that has pa.s.sed away. They have almost ceased to support life.
In the days of Rome"s greatness, Sicily was known as "the granary of Rome" because from this little island came the grains to supply her vast armies. 12,000,000 bushels of grain was the tribute that Rome claimed of Sicily each year, and yet Sicily had enough left to make her rich. She built splendid cities and became great. But the same story of destruction is to be read in the history of Sicily. Now the entire island does not raise a million and a half bushels of wheat altogether.
The soil is barren. The cities have nearly all fallen into ruin. The people are scattered. Thousands have come to America, seeking a poor living at the lowest wages because at home there was no chance to earn even the little they require. They allowed the soil to become exhausted by lack of fertilization and by erosion and it long ago ceased to support the people. All the rest followed naturally.
In many parts of our own country this same danger is coming on us. It is only the beginning, but the end is as sure for us as for those far-off Eastern countries.
Millions of acres have already been destroyed in the East and South. The Appalachian mountain system lies not far from the coast, and the rivers on the eastern slopes are short and swift. It is necessary, then, to exercise the greatest care of the forests in order to prevent the floods in this region from carrying away the lands in their swift rush to the sea. North Carolina was one of the richest states in the Union in natural resources a hundred years ago. Now it is low on the list in agricultural products. The forests on its mountain tops were valuable for their lumber, their turpentine, pitch, and other products, and great lumber companies have almost denuded the hillsides, regardless of the fate of the lands they cut over. The people of the state are powerless to prevent this except by buying all of these lands and replanting the forests. They have been pleading with Congress for power to stop the destruction of their forests and the wasting of their lands, but so far have received no a.s.sistance and meanwhile the land grows poorer each year. The same conditions are to be found in many other states that now rank high agriculturally, but in North Carolina we are beginning to see results.
In order to understand exactly how the damage is done to the land, let us suppose a case which has actually occurred in hundreds of places. A farmer owned a farm on the mountain side. Much of it was good wheat land, but the top was covered with forests. At last he decided to cut and sell the timber, and use the land for raising more wheat. He did so, but now there was no spreading foliage to check the dash of the heavy rains as they fell to the ground. As they sank below the surface there were no ma.s.ses of tangled roots to hold the moisture in the soil and to carry it up into the air again through the trees.
As the water penetrated deeper, the soil became softened, and was carried away down the hillside. It was only a muddy little stream, but it took away some of the richest soil from the fields, and the next year"s crop was not quite so good. Every rain that fell carried more of the fertile soil down the hillside, and the next year the farmer wondered that the yield was still less. After a few years he ceased to sow the field because it had never paid for its cultivation, and was constantly growing poorer. But it was too late then to repair the damage that had been done. There were no seeds of forest trees left in the ground and the farmer did not plant them, so the ground lay idle and desolate. The rain wore deep gullies down the hillside, which, as they grew larger, became more of a menace to the lands below them. The streams soon grew large enough to take the top-soil from the fields lower down, and in a few years more the whole farm had grown so unproductive that the farmer, tired of the struggle, left the farm and went to the city to make a living.
In the meantime the land in the valley below had been growing more fertile, for each year the spring floods had left a rich soil deposit behind them. The farmer down there had been innocently stealing the land above him, but not all of it, for much had been carried out to sea.
It is not possible to prevent this entirely, but much of the loss might have been avoided by leaving the hilltops, which are never well fitted for cultivation, covered with forests. In this way the soil-wash from above is prevented and the streams run gently and with only a small amount of muddy deposit, forming proper drainage for the soil.
The preserving of the forests on the great mountain ranges of the country, where nature has placed them, will mean in the one matter of soil-wash, fruitful lands and bountiful harvests, instead of barren, wasted lands, desolated by floods and seamed by great ravines, carrying desolation to the lands below them.
But in many cases the trees are already cut away. Here replanting becomes necessary and should be done in every case where soil-wash is beginning on the mountain tops. It is almost equally desirable to plant small shrubs and bushes as an undergrowth, so that the roots may form a thick mat below the ground to hold the water in the soil, and permit it to filter through slowly.
In Ma.s.sachusetts, the tracks of the Boston and Albany Railroad are depressed so that trains may pa.s.s below the level of the highways. In order to protect the banks from erosion, the sloping sides of this roadway have been planted with trailing rose-bushes and other vines which have thickly matted roots. These serve a double purpose in preventing landslides and washouts on the tracks, and in adding greatly to the attractiveness of the scenery along the railway.
The poorest land of a farm is always found on the hilltops, because even with the greatest care there is always considerable waste of the top-soil. This land, then, should never be used for field crops. It should const.i.tute the woodland, or if this is not possible, the pasture-land of the farm, for the gra.s.s roots protect the soil and prevent it from washing away, and the profits on the hay are at least as great as any other crop which could be grown on hill land.
But when erosion has been checked and the top-soil preserved, when the soil is thoroughly fertilized, and a proper rotation of crops established, there are still other lessons to be learned in order to make our country as productive as it might be, as it will _need_ to be to support the population that we shall have by the end of the century.
As a nation we undertake to farm too much land and do it carelessly.
The invention of labor-saving machinery has made it possible to farm hundreds and even thousands of acres together with little physical labor. This has made farmers heedless of small amounts of land wasted.
A man often only expects to make a comfortable living on one hundred and sixty acres of land, while in Europe he would expect to grow rich on two or three acres. It is often said that a French family would live off of an American farmer"s neglected fence-corners. In France, in England, in Holland and Belgium every bit of land is tended and made useful. We have the best natural soil in the world, the most fertile river valleys, watered by abundant rains. The fertility of our lands is the envy of the civilized world, and has drawn thousands to our sh.o.r.es in the hope of finding comfort and plenty, and yet the total value of our farm products was only eleven dollars and thirty-eight cents per cultivated acre according to the last census, while in the little island of Jersey, just off the English coast, the average annual value of products is over two hundred and fifty dollars per acre.
Germany has been cultivated nearly eighteen hundred years, the soil is not naturally so productive nor the climate so favorable as ours, but the wheat yield there averages more than twice as much as in this country.
When the most fertile land in the world produces so much less than poorer lands elsewhere it plainly shows that we are robbing the soil in order to get the largest cash returns in the shortest possible time and with the least possible labor.
The American farmer needs to cultivate a much smaller amount of land thoroughly, to have a soil a.n.a.lysis made of his land in order to know what crops are best suited to it and what elements are lacking to make it produce the best. In Illinois more than half a million acres had become unfit for cultivation. a.n.a.lysis showed that the soil was too acid. By mixing limestone dust with the soil the trouble was corrected and the land reclaimed.
Often it is only necessary to find the cause of some deficiency, or lack, in the soil, and the remedy will be found to be simple and cheap, while the result of its use will be to double the crop. Nothing else so quickly and easily responds to proper treatment, no other resource is so easily conserved. All the soil needs is proper treatment.
Every bit of waste land should be cultivated for either use or beauty, or both. If all the lanes and neglected places could be planted with fruit and nut trees, berry vines, and bushes, herbs or flowers which need little cultivation after they are planted, our food, in variety and quant.i.ty, would be greatly increased. "The hedge-rows of Old England"
are famous for their beauty and the air of comfort and prosperity they give. They take the place of the weeds that grow by the country roadsides in America and which const.i.tute one of the greatest nuisances of the farmer.
Another thing that should be considered is the marketing of farm products. Near a city or near a canning factory the soil can be most profitably used for the raising of vegetables, for which the cost of cultivation is great, but which yield far larger profits than farm crops.
Within the last few years a new system of farming has been developed in the West, which is of great interest to all of us, both because it is opening up for production a large part of our country that has seemed valueless, and because the lessons that have been learned there are of the greatest advantage in every part of the country.
West of the one-hundredth meridian, which crosses North and South Dakota, the western part of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and including the states west of them, lies a vast region that used to be known as the "great American desert." It comprises almost half of the United States. Here the n.o.ble forests of the eastern states and the prairie gra.s.ses of the plains were replaced by sage-brush and cactus.
The soil was light in color and weight, and the rainfall very scanty.
It seemed impossible that it could ever be fitted for agriculture. But there were a few great rivers, rich mining districts, and excellent grazing lands. These attracted settlers, and to them some cultivation of the soil became almost a necessity. The waste waters of the rivers were used for irrigation and the land when watered was found to produce remarkably fine fruits and agricultural products. Yet there were hundreds of thousands of acres that could not be irrigated for lack of water, and the problem of finding a use for these barren, semi-arid lands remained unsolved for many years.
But here and there in different states and under varying conditions, after many experiments and failures, men began without water to grow successful crops on these semi-arid lands, where the rainfall was scarcely more than ten inches per year. Others following this method found success, and it began to seem possible that all this territory might some day become a great farming region.
By comparing the methods employed in different states, the few general laws have been worked out which must be applied in order to farm successfully in this region, though the details differ with local differences in alt.i.tude, climate, soil, and rainfall. Here farming is being reduced to a science. In other parts of the country a man sows his seed and nature cares for it, and gives him his harvest; but here he must wring from nature all that he gets, so it is only the man who farms according to fixed laws who can hope to succeed.
This system is usually called "dry farming," though "scientific farming"
would perhaps be a better name, for the same principles that are absolutely necessary here will greatly increase the yield anywhere. The most important principle is to conserve every particle of moisture in the soil. It is necessary to go deep into the soil to find the underlying moisture. The seed-bed is made very deep. Plowing is from sixteen to nineteen inches deep, while in well-watered regions it is only about six inches. This deep seed-bed is thoroughly cultivated to make the soil porous, the soil being reduced to a fine powder. After sowing the seed, the ground is packed as solidly as possible. This is done by especially designed machines. The surface of the soil is kept broken all the time to prevent the escape of the moisture. This rule applies equally to all soils in dry weather, and will often save a crop of corn in any part of the country during a drought.
These are simple rules, but the practice of them is opening up the great semi-arid regions, not of the United States only, but of the whole earth. Western Canada, a large part of Australia, the Kalahari Desert of Africa, and many parts of Asia, which are all semi-arid, will in time become productive instead of barren.
It must be remarked that the grains of the East could not withstand the severe winters in a large part of the Northwest, so the Department of Agriculture sent men all over the world to find drought-and-cold-resisting grains. They found a hard winter wheat, the most nutritious in existence, which is now growing all the way from the Dakotas to the Pacific Ocean, producing crops far above the yield of the eastern states. 50,000,000 bushels of this wheat was raised in 1907.
The soil is the natural disintegrated rock, rich in the mineral elements, but lacking in decayed vegetable matter. The crops soon exhaust the nitrogen, and as clover and the common alfalfas can not grow there, the problem of finding legumes has been the most serious one facing this new region; but in Siberia the Agricultural Department has recently found a new clover and three varieties of alfalfa that will stand the cold, and Secretary Wilson believes that these will solve the problem.
Every acre brought under cultivation adds to the world"s food supply.
Can we even dream of what it will mean when 200,000,000 acres are added to the farm lands of this continent? It means prosperity for the farmers themselves, homes for those who are now crowded in cities, work for the idle, and food for the hungry. It means wealth and happiness for thousands now living and millions yet to come.
REFERENCES
Lands. Report National Conservation Commission.
Soil Wastage. Chamberlain. Report White House Conference of Governors.
Conservation of Soils. Van Hise. (Same.)
Commercial Fertilizers. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 44.[A]
[Footnote A: Department of Agriculture bulletins are free unless a price is indicated, and may be obtained by application to The Department of Agriculture. Washington, D. C. Postage is free in the United States.
These bulletins contain the latest scientific information and result of research work by the government.]
The Liming of Soils. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 57.
Renovation of Worn-out Soils. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 245.
Soil Fertility. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 257.
Management of Soils to Conserve Moisture. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 266.
Fertilizers for Cotton Soils. Bureau of Soils Bulletin, 62.
Work of the Bureau of Soils. Bureau of Soils Bulletin.
Exhaustion and Abandonment of Soils. Bureau of Soils Bulletin. Whitney, 5c.